Rita wishes she didn't need hands to hog the palm and play solitaire all day.
My parents run a business together out of their house, and in my dad's multi-week absence my mom has been at home doing the work of three people. (They have an assistant, Rita, but she doesn't appear to be much help. She takes long lunches, she's late almost every day, and she's completely round.)
Late last week I called and asked Mom if she wanted to have dinner and she said no, thanks, that she was getting ready to crawl into bed. I thought that a little odd at the time since it was roughly three in the afternoon, but hey, I practically have a top sheet growing out of my abdomen-- I'm in no position to play Bed Police.
Skip ahead to this week and my poor mom has one of those flus that make people who come into contact with her want to slather themselves in betadine and hang out at
Walgreens for a few hours. She was supposed to fly out to meet my dad today but there was absolutely no way that was going to happen. Not only because she's too sick to stand up, but also because the fluid in her face and head FAR exceeds legal carry-on limits. So I went over to my parents' house last night to Fed Ex my dad's dark suit to him and to make sure my mom ate something that stayed eaten. I stood at the foot of her bed and listed everything in the kitchen that I thought boasted the most internal gravity.
"Could you please..." she whispered. "Could you please go get me a steak panini from
Einstein's?"
"Mom," I said, hating to be the bearer, "I'm sorry, but Einstein's is only open until like ten in the morning." Watch, now my sick mom hates my guts.
She rolled over weakly under the comforter and groaned something about my guts.
So I made her some soup I found in the cabinet. Alphabet soup, store brand from a can, so baseless and anemic that the all the limp pasta words in it were misspelled. It made me sad watching her eat it. I wished I had a lamp to rub for a panini.
"Do you need anything else?" I asked. "Do you want me to shut the house down for you?"
And the second the words were out of my mouth, "shut the house down", I wanted to slap myself in the face. My mom nodded emphatically over a spoonful of alfibit. "Oh, would you?" Shit.
Before adopting her current occupation my mother was the director of several art galleries in downtown Scottsdale. She's also been a licensed and successful interior designer for close to thirty years. Why is this important? The woman is a
lighting ninja. Every room in their house holds roughly four thousand separate lights-- every picture, every shelf, every eave, every counter, end table, kitchen table, kitchen counter, bathroom counter, armoire, fucking bookshelf, fucking sconce-- is lit by its very own subtle and aesthetic light source. My parents would go out of town when I was younger but the fear of blowing it with the lighting and giving myself away upon their return-- combined with the fact that I had no friends-- kept me from throwing any wild parties in their absence.
Shut the house down, indeed. As I crept around the house, squeezing between the wall and the couch to get to four different tiny switches, studying the shelves in the office trying to determine how the fuck to turn
that off, I realized that growing up this chore was the reason we all raced to bed at six: the last one awake had to SHUT THE DAMN HOUSE DOWN.
But of course I took care of it. Who else was going to do it? Rita? Please. All bitch does is roll.
It took me about twenty-five minutes. Randy and I just light matches around our house for light so I'm a little out of practice.
This morning I brought Mom chicken soup that I had made from scratch last night after I got home, complete with homemade egg noodles (1,398 matches, thanks). I warmed it up and then propped her against the headboard so she could eat.
"If you're good and eat all your soup," I said, "tomorrow maybe we can talk about that panini."
I'm bribing my own mother with a five-dollar bagel store panini.
She looked up at me then all bleary sick-eyed and wobbly, hopeful, taking an extra big spoonful, and my heart just broke for her. I was
this close to throwing the soup down the drain and running down the street to Panini Town when I suddenly realized that all of the lights in the house-- the lights that I had systematically turned off the night before like shutting down the
Louvre-- had all been turned back on.
"Did you..." and I gestured around the room, "did you turn all this shit
on again?"
She ate soup.
"I had to help you stand
up a minute ago, but you seriously got out of bed this morning and limped around and re-illuminated the entire house? I mean, I left you a box of
matches, Mom."
She put the soup down wetly and scooched under the covers. "It wasn't that hard," she sighed.
No, of course it wasn't. So I washed her soup cup and tucked her in for the day, secure in the knowledge that as soon as I left my mom would be up and out of bed, planting tulips and waxing the car and busting out the panini maker.
I'm not sure what Rita spent the day doing. I can only imagine it was something spherical.
Late last week I called and asked Mom if she wanted to have dinner and she said no, thanks, that she was getting ready to crawl into bed. I thought that a little odd at the time since it was roughly three in the afternoon, but hey, I practically have a top sheet growing out of my abdomen-- I'm in no position to play Bed Police.
It took me about twenty-five minutes. Randy and I just light matches around our house for light so I'm a little out of practice.
